Jason Engwer at Triablogue revives this common argument in a blog post of January 15. Typically a Protestant will claim that it’s incongruous for Jesus to give Peter authority over the whole Church only to turn around five verses later and rebuke him and call him “Satan.” But Alt! the Protestant will say. Am I really supposed to believe Christ gives Peter infallibility, and the very first thing he does with it is to claim that Jesus will never be killed and rise from the dead? My answer is you’re conflating two separate questions.
Is Matt. 16:23 (“get behind me, Satan”) a proof-text against Peter’s primacy?
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 31, 2023 • Apologetics; Exegesis; papacy
Candida Moss is a popularizer who is given to making wild claims that the stubborn text of the New Testament won’t support. Her Ph.D. is from Yale, in religious studies, and that should give her some heft on biblical questions; but you can easily refute her with Google, a lexicon, and some elementary knowledge of the Bible and Greek. In her latest performance, on January 1 at the Daily Beast, CM promotes the revisionist work of Dr. Mitzi Smith in a scholarly collection entitled Bitter the Chastening Rod. I like the title. “Some readers,” Dr. Moss says, “will be shocked by Smith’s suggestion. How could we think that Mary was enslaved?”
“I exhort you as your fellow elder,” St. Peter writes, and it’s hard to know who first tried to use this verse as a proof-text against papal primacy. Why, Peter himself says he’s just one among many! So why does the pope lord it over the whole Church? One thing it’s not hard to know is that the Church Fathers are full of assertions that Peter does have primacy, and not one of them ever cites 1 Peter 5:1 to refute the idea. If the text does deny papal primacy, apparently none of the Church Fathers were aware of it. Dear reader, you’re welcome to search an index of Scripture references in the Church Fathers if you think you can find any of them citing 1 Peter 5:1 to deny the primacy of Peter. Surely they were aware of the text — Cyprian refers to it, as do Tertullian and Jerome — but none of them think it means that Peter is no more than the equal of all other bishops.
St. Francis de Sales, among others, disputes the notion that a pope could teach heresy: “In truth, it is necessary that we should follow him simply, not guide him; otherwise the sheep would be shepherds. … Now all this has not only been true of St. Peter, but also of his successors; for the cause remaining the effect remains likewise. The Church has always need of an infallible confirmer, to whom she can appeal; of a foundation which the gates of hell, and principally error, cannot overthrow; and has always need that her pastor should be unable to lead her children into error. The successors, then, of St. Peter all have these same privileges.”
It’s possible St. Thomas More is responsible for the fact that so many Catholics like to cite John 20:30 – 31 and John 21:25 as proof texts against sola scriptura. I haven’t tried to trace the argument forward. Certain it is, however, that you’ll hear it a lot if you watch “The Journey Home” on EWTN, and every now and then you’ll find it on Catholic apologetics Web sites and in longish apologetics “guides.” Here’s John 20:30 – 31 in the RSV-CE: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
You nullify the word of God by your tradition!” Christ tells the Pharisees in Mark 7:13. Mark 7:13 is a common Protestant proof text for sola scriptura and, specifically, against the authority of tradition — so much so that Dr.* White ends his opening statement with it. See? he cries. Jesus condemned tradition! We’ll get there. But first let’s join Dr.* White around 35:45, when he turns to an oft-stated and, truth be told, bizarre claim: The decision to convert to Catholicism is a fallible decision. No doubt it is, but who denies it? It’s hard to tell what Dr.* White thinks he proves by pointing this out.
Atheists sometimes have the same obsession with biblical literalism that Fundamentalists do. One such atheist is Tim Sledge. Mr. Sledge used to be a Baptist pastor. He now has two books out. Goodbye Jesus is his deconversion story. The follow-up is called Four Disturbing Questions With One Simple Answer, and even Dr. David Madson, whose Ph.D. is in biblical studies, thinks it’s a slam-dunk against Christianity. The book is full of dumb questions like Why didn’t Jesus tell us about germs? But apparently people with Ph.D.‘s in biblical studies take the poor guy seriously.
It strikes me as odd that, if we are essentially God’s marionettes, doing what God has scripted us to do, our actions appear to us so much like choices. I think you have to engage in a particularly profane act of self-deception to convince yourself that the words you speak, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the things you do, are not your own choices but were chosen for you beforehand: to convince yourself that God threw a rope around you rather than you choosing him because you were drawn and fell in love. If you can tell yourself these things, eisegesis followers as the night the day. 
John 6:44 certainly teaches prevenient grace: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” Apart from being drawn by grace, we would be powerless to come. “And I will raise him up on the last day.” But — and this is important — Christ’s raising on the last day is dependent not just upon being drawn, but on coming to him. Not all who are drawn will come. And that presupposes free will. With that in mind, we can turn to John 6:37: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Calvinist’s read eternal security into this text. 
Before we get to Hebrews 10:14, dear reader, let us look ahead to Hebrews 10:26. “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” This text, like 1 Cor. 10:12, warns of the danger of apostasy; and that’s a tricky concept if you believe in once saved, always saved. Some Calvinists try to nuance this by saying that only those who were never saved in the first place can apostasize, but that’s nonsense: If you were never saved in the first place, there’s nothing to apostasize from. 
In an absolute sense, “limited atonement” is not contrary to Catholic teaching, if you mean only that not all will be saved. By rejecting the “L” of “TULIP,” the Church does not teach universalism. Many are called but few are chosen. The Council of Trent makes that clear: “But, though He died for all, yet do not all receive the benefit of His death, but those only unto whom the merit of His passion is communicated.” It is communicated only to those who, by free will, cooperate with the grace of God working in them. Thus Canons 4 – 6 pronounce anathemas upon those who deny human free will.
The short answer to the question is: No. The Church is bound to the Scriptures and to the deposit of faith and its own judgments in the exercise of its teaching authority; it must elucidate Scripture and the deposit of faith and apply them to new questions; no more. That is what Catholic apologists mean when they say that the Church is the servant of the Scriptures and the servant of the deposit of faith. Now. Protestants think in the paradigm of sola; so upon learning that Catholics reject sola scriptura, they conclude they must practice sola ecclesia. But no. 
